The cat came back, he just couldn't stay away

Every time I want to write an update about the cat, the situation changes. I don't even want to necessarily update, but it's a rainy Bank Holiday Monday and I like to think several readers would want to know how he's doing.

At the end of my last post, the vet had called and the news wasn't good. The blood test results were clean, which suggested there was a more sinister problem -- but when I called my neighbour to give her a version of the news, she said the cat was doing a whole heap better and I thought maybe after all it was just his arthritis.

Unfortunately, that was wishful thinking. The cat went off his food again quickly, so I made another appointment a few days later and told my boss I'd be late into work.

This visit was much sadder for me. It sounds pathetic, but I chokingly told the receptionist his name when we arrived, then sat quietly sobbing in the waiting room, while the other pet owners awkwardly shuffled their feet, looked at each other, and talked very quietly, trying to pretend I wasn't there.

I continued to cry like a little girl with a skinned knee when the vet called us in, and I tried to tell her how just maybe the problem was with the cat's teeth. She took him away and weighed him, and confirmed on her return he was still losing weight -- and I think perhaps to humour me, agreed to book the cat in for a dental. The danger was, she told me, that he was an old cat and there is always a risk with general anaesthetic. I hesitated, but she laid it out plainly -- we could risk the operation, or the cat could starve to death. Hardly a choice.

The vet did have an idea for the meantime, and she fetched some special prescription cat food. The food was high calorie, high protein and especially palatable. She opened the tin for him, and let him lick some food from her fingers -- he seemed keen, so she gave me three tins on top of the opened one.

The cat was only required to eat one tin of food a day, and all seemed fine for a couple of days. I agreed with the vet to postpone the dental until we'd fattened up the cat a bit more, and we we went away for the weekend. A phone call to my neighbour on Sunday confirmed he was still behaving and eating reasonably well.

The girl and I decided to come to my parents house to keep an eye on the cat until they got back from holiday later in the week, and it was only a day or two before he was back to refusing food again.

I called the vet again on Thursday when my parents returned (shocked to see such an old and thin looking cat in the place of the one they'd left, two weeks before) and even though they were clearly busy, when the receptionist talked to the vet, they were able to fit in the cat the next day for his dental.

The girl and I separately spent the whole day wondering and worrying about the cat. I counted down the hours until 4.30 when I could call my Dad and find out what the outcome was. The good news came that the cat had behaved well, and was awake following the procedure. The bad news he told me was that they found nothing wrong with the cat's teeth, instead they were in remarkably good condition.

I was practically crushed. If the blood tests revealed nothing and a dental exam revealed nothing, then it must really be something like a tumour. What I hadn't been told on the phone -- annoyingly -- was the vet had decided the cat's gums were inflamed, especially on one side were he was particularly shy and they had given him antibiotics. That night the cat polished off a whole tin of his special prescription food. Unrealistically, I got my hopes up.

Saturday and Sunday followed with the cat showing no interest in any food, and my hopes faded that he was still full from eating a whole tin on Friday night. On Sunday my parents began force-feeding the cat his antibiotic tablets he was refusing to take voluntarily, and now it's Monday and he seems like perhaps, just maybe, he might be a little brighter and a little more inclined to eat.

Tomorrow once again he returns to the vet, where they will ask for a long-lasting antibiotic injection for the cat in place of the tablets, and a steroid shot to boost his appetite.

It's an update, it's where we are up to, but I don't know where we go from here. It's been so up and down emotionally last week and this weekend that I can't even speculate. We just have to remember he's the best cat in the world, the cat who once ate an entire wood pigeon (leaving only one foot) and we aren't letting him go anywhere yet.